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Intellectual Property Law

: IPKat

The German "Piratenpartei" and the German General election

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

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A little while ago the IPKat reported on the German "Die Piratenpartei" (see the IPKat and Alex Horn's post here), the sister party of the Swedish Piratpartiet. While this Kat is politically neutral (well, at least on this blog), she still felt that it would be interesting to see how the German pirates fared at Germany's General election.

While Angela Merkel's CDU party won Sunday's General election and will now (most likely) form a new government with the liberal FDP party, the IPKat has noted that "Die Piratenpartei" appears to have secured a respectable 2% of all votes. Even though party chairman Jens Seipenbusch viewed these 2% as "magic threshold" (according to a report by German tabloid Bild), the German pirates will not enter the German parliament (Bundestag) since German election laws require that a party needs to have 5% of all votes to be represented in parliament. However, German tabloid "Bild" reports that 13% of Germany's first time voters voted for "Die Piratenpartei" - which is a respectable result, this Kat thinks.

The German pirates, inter alia, focus on the protection of civil liberties on the Internet, believe that there is no need for software patents, are against patents for "genes" or human beings, believe that current copyright and intellectual property legislation is based on a "dated view" of intellectual property and support the legalisation of "private copying". Their website can be found here.

Full post as published by IPKat on September 27, 2009 (boomark / email).

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